Playing Together

A lot of MMO gamers play with someone they know in real life. For example, 60% of female gamers and 16% of male gamers play with a romantic partner. 40% of female gamers and 35% of male gamers play with a family member. As you can imagine, playing with someone you know can be both a good and bad thing. Here are stories that cover many different aspects of that game-play.

Enhances Game-Play

One dominant theme was that playing with someone you know in RL enhances game play. It simply makes the game more fun to know who you're playing with.

I regularly play online games with my husband. I find that playing with someone nearby (in voice range) is a great asset for online gaming. Knowing my husbands play style and him knowing mine, makes all the difference in our game enjoyment. We know what to expect from each other and rely on those things. Being able to play together keeps our relationship strong and playful, both in game and in real life. We always have something to talk about...the day to day RL grind and that ugly monster we had to deal with in game. =D [ATITD, F, 44]

Jason from New Orleans describes how his EQ experience was enhanced after his best friend started playing.

When my best RL friend started playing EQ, the game suddenly became a whole lot more enjoyable. We knew each other pretty well, so we already had a really trusting relationship. We really worked well, he as an ogre warrior, I as a dark-elven cleric. We played together all the time, though eventually he started to outlevel me. Since we saw each other all the time in real life, though, it wasn't a big deal. He would just make new a character, get them high enough level to group up with me again, outlevel me, and start all over again. We went through four characters like that, hehe. Warrior, rogue, druid, shadowknight... I remember grouping with all of them with my cleric, and it was always a lot of fun. I've had some good online friends in EQ, some of whom I still chat with, but grouping with my RL buddy was always the most fun I'd had in it. [EQ, M, 23]